by Roman aka jar

Well,what tip do I want to give with this strange photo?
Several ones actually. Everything has its right moment. A photo shot. A dance. Painting on a certain project. Finishing a model. Wait for it. It can not be forced.

Everything has a golden angle you want to take the photo from, especially figures. For example a bust's best photo you show should always show the figures face and even better connects with the look that you painted in the busts eyes. A good example is this mermaid bust painted by Melissa. I was able to hold this bust in my hands while doing judging work at NOVA Open and it is a wonderful example on this. I fell in love with her look from this particular angle. She looks at me. She wants me to come to the ocean with her.

by Roman aka jar

Good Monday Morning Jungle,

time for another monkey in the deep jungle forest. This time it is a bust that I recieved as a gift a while back from my friends, the Cursed Monkeys from Spain. I am not sure if you can get this online anyhow. Might have to check back with Cursed Monkeys.

I took this model with my to my recent trip to the NOVA Open to have additional surface to explain something. I did not work much on it, but had the option to explain little things on it. It came home with me in a very early WIP state. While I was sitting down and wanted to finish it I checked back with some references of chimpanzees and found out that their face is not truely smooth. They got a lot of wrinkles and skin variations going on, so I tried to paint these freehand on this small bust. That was fun.

by Roman aka jar

"Ettin"CMON Massive Darkness
32 mm (Ogre size)

This figure was a lot of fun to paint. A Fantasy character that you see not very often.
This handpainted figure will be given away for free in a raffle via Instagram as
soon as my Instagram profile reaches 10K followers. Maybe exactly you will win him!

by Peter aka Baphomet

Hey jungle,

it´s just a few months ago when the new editon of Warhammer 40 hit the stores and all fell in love with the new Primaris Space Marines. Some even call them the "True Scale Marine". As I´m a good old fan boy and the new ruleset made it possible to get back into the game easily, I bought the starter box and prepared my unholy Death Guard for battle.My idea was to slowly convert the Primaris Marines into Death Guard Marines, all the bits were already prepared, but time is always a short resource. So, the Marines still wait for their chance to serve Great Father Nurgle, but hopefully this might change, soon!

Nevertheless, one of those guys helped me changing my mindset regarding the hobby. After a longer period of lacking motivation, I took one of the the Primaris and started painting. Somehow I managed to really enjoy this and leave a dark valley . I will probably tell you more about this in some time as it is strongly connected to the actual painter´s scene and I want to share my thoughts. But this needs a good preparation and for now, you simply get some pictures :)

by Roman aka jar

Hi Jungle friends,

we got some monkey news concerning the upcoming Scale Model Challenge in October.
Some of the MV monkeys will be at the Show: Peter, Phil and Josua. I will be there too, even I thought I will definatly not make it first, because of a knee operation. This is a longer story. Too long to be told here.

After last years fun
we had in a spontaneous basketball game we decided to do this again this year, but with a little more time in advance and organisation so everybody who wants to join the fun can bring proper sports clothes, friends and a little time. If you want bring swimming clothes too as you can jump in the pool after the game and even sauna to relax before heading for the bars and talks. Thanks to Andy for allowing me to use some of the photos he made from last years fun we had.

Thanks to
Margot and Robert Crombeecke who helped with organisational things and spoke with the hotel to have the gym all for us in this time.

What if you think you can not play basketball?
Well this does not matter, everyone is welcome for the game as we only play chilled and for the fun of sports and community. We also play relaxed to not hurt ourselves. Sport is just a great way to communicate beside figure painting, isn't it? Come join us Saturday night!

by Roman aka jar

This tip of the week is - again - on a very significant topic: Observation skills.

Learn to obvserve what your eyes see day by day and learn from it for painting. I call this visual studying and what I can tell is that this helps me a lot while on my journey as a painter. Give it a try and read an article about visual studying here and even for different months of the year:; Autumn, winter, spring ... (still missing summer on this one, but in progress).

Others might call it carbage. I find beauty in dead bonsai trees and of course in alive ones too. The color of soil and the variety of elements.

A dark blue night. Colors change by daytime.

The color of stones is not neutral grey.

Reflecting material works different with light and shadow than non-reflecting material.

Take your time to enjoy the small things in life and train your eye to find them.

If you like to support or say thanks the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale here.

by Roman aka jar

Good Morning Jungle Painters,

we like to share ideas, thoughts and painting processes and it is not to wonder that we are able to present you another step by step article. I am catching up with some figures I painted back in 2016 and prepared articles for. Always remember Massive Voodoo is offering these for free and they do take time and effort to land in MV'S unique and huge selection of free tutorials and articles.
So if you like what you can find on MV consider the following - thanks for your support!

If you like to support or say thanks the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale here.

"Now listen up worm,you think you can get in this club? Told ya a strict no, so do not mess with me. I've seen snails with a stronger spine than yours. Shut the front door and move off." - Vizar, the bouncer

This article is about "Vizar",
a future bouncer - at least in my vision - when I did the box art comission for Spawning Pool Studios last year. Read more about it here.

Vizar here is a great model and I enjoyed every second working on him. If you read on you will find me talking about the following aspects in this step by step:

project plan/vision/basework/priming/basic colors

workflow/painting process/paintint red

including two object source lights while painting zenital light

I hope you enjoy!

project plan/vision/basework
Allrighty - I'll be back in a second to continue writing - need a fresh coffee first.
Allrighty again. This model took me about 30 hours to paint, including basework, prep and priming. The article that you can read here took me about 8 hours overall, including photo edit, sorting photos, writing my thoughts on the project. vision
This was rather simple, but constructed to be effectfull for my OSL from below. My vision for Vizar here was a as a bouncer on a spacy scifi space port, filled with all the scum the universe has to offer and he is toughest. I wanted to create an old school Shadowrun feel to it.

basework/priming/basic colors
I wanted to create this one a very small squared plinth to limit my space for telling the story. I could have gone with a wall and a door to the club and so much more, but I wanted to still have the model in focus for a box art and it is always good to challenge oneself.

Material I used were mainly plasticcard elements that I cut into the shape I need them too and and some small six-cornered-bricks for building small six-cornered-brick-towers that are meant to be energy suspenders for the lights on the ground. Yeah. Whatever.

Primed him black, combined with white from the top.

As I work my way from rough and sketchy to clean and sharp I started dirty and fast to understand my vision. Placed basecolors slippy sloppy to understand what I am aiming for. I can not give you precise color recipes - again - on this one as everything I needed was mixed by using primaries plus black and white. All basic colors that were placed recieved a touch of blue to tie them together in my ambience plan.

workflow/painting process
I decided for some more colors and went totally cameo style here.
Painting red can be a pain in the stomach, but here is a little tip: Start dark and strongly desaturated. You can desaturate your red with the use of black or a dark blue or a dark green. In this case I went for black and a tiny drop of blue to match my basic colors.

Regaining control over dirty areas by repainting them with more color. Repainting the blacks (still a tiny drop of blue inside) and while doing so also grabbing his hair and super future glasses with the black color. More definition of different thhings on the model.

Already looking forward to paint the reds. You can already see a difference between saturation while I placed the basic colors. One side is meant to be darker than the other but it is not shadows what is happening here, it is saturation.

Took a photo of this stage with the big camera, where the colds were more visibile.

Time for stage two after my initial sketch. Painting on. Painting highlights on the blacks, very bright as you can see, they might not look like blacks anymore, but I know I can tint them down later on again if need be. More highlights on the skin to define volumes and shape. Still very pinkish, but the magenta and purple in my basic color creates this when adding white. Painting my highlights under the guide of zenital light.

Another light source comes in. First OSL.
Painting a quick sketch on my colors for the base and definining things in sketchy way. Painted the light panels pure and opaque white first to recieve the most effective glow powers in the end.

Already slapping color here and there where I see the OSL take hold of the model and while giving the magentas on the base a small highlight I also did this to the areas of his boots that were lid from below, mainly on the lower edges to understand what I am aiming for on this.

Did a photo in the photobox again on this stage to see properly what I have done here. Not as rough as my basic sketch, my vision gets clearer. Everything I can not handle at the moment due it is not important right now - for example, his patches, glasses, gun - does not recieve any attention and is just painted black.

Next stage made me increase highlights in all areas. Pushing brighter and brighter and smaller and smaller, but always checking back how zenithal light will hit a certain shape. The overall shape of the large one first, then the smaller ones included in that shape. The thoughts behind placing these highlights bigger or smaller come from my studies of different materials. On how they reflect light. Check back with photos of clothes, skin, metal, whatever or the real thing. Mainly worked on the black clothes and skintone.

Did touch the reds with a stronger saturated red first and then small reflexion dots. For these I have added a cold off white to my last used red mix. The gun recived a basic sketch of green and blue and metal parts were painted in a dark metal color. Metall pigment color + black is the key here.

Vizar recieved more attention to detail in the next stage. I cleaned up rough color transitions that I wanted to see smoother. I increased tiny little details all of the place. Edge highlights, bringing in the second OSL from the gun but not as strong as there should only be a small reflection on areas sorrounding the gun. Painted white on top of the magenta LED bars on the bottom.

A photo from the work in progress cabinet to check back if the magento glow is slowly working. It is important to see your project not only under daylight while working at it also try to check back with it in different light situations, for example daylight, big roomlight, etc.

Checking back on it under my daylight table. The white I have added is important to give a stronger OSL effect coming from this light source, later on when glazed again with magenta flouroscent color by Vallejo.

Sometimes during projects I have to set up my wet palette for fresh new start on things and mind. Ready for a start in happy painting.

I was about closing into details on Vizar now. A fresh wet palette can help on this as it sharpens the brain and brush to what you really need now.

I mainly went for retouching the lower OSL now, how it will influance the lower part of the figure and base. Added some minor tweaks here and there on ... well everything. I am listening to inner voice that tells me if I miss something like a highlight here and there or if I should calm something down. As soon as this voice wents silent I am close to abandon the project.

Mainly going back with magenta glazes to bring back the glow and its intensity from below.

And I abandoned the project after doing still some minor tweaks here and there. I was really happy about the outcome and the vision that I was able to catch with my version of "Vizar", the bouncer. Hope you like him too:

Summary
You can include several light sources like zenital light and several OSL influances in one model, but it is a thin line you walk there as these things can also be confusing to the viewers eye. I decided to go for a normal zenital light on the model first to make it understandable and readable easily. Then I decided for a strong OSL from below as this is something the viewers eyes can read easily again if the light source is located on the base. The small green shine of the weapons energy is not as strong as the one from below and therefor only a small area was used. It is also easy to read as the osl source is located on the model. I decided to not add another light source from not on the base itself. With all the saturated colors in the middle I might destroy the color harmony and readability for the viewers eye.

If you like to support or say thanks the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale here.

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... MASSIVE VOODOO’s jungle, where some apes share their thoughts and ideas around their beloved passion, the hobby of miniature painting and sculpting.

Feel welcome to come and check the jungle for tons of articles, interesting tutorials, creative competitions and the simple joy of happy painting hidden behind every tree. We hope that everyone finds their own banana in here, if not do not hesitate to ask the apes. We are more than happy for you to post in the comments section to help turn this jungle into the lush, overgrown painting corner we hope it will become.